Changes In Property Rights Research Articles

Le droit de propriété en Russie : l'évolution d'une catégorie juridique au gré des bouleversements politiques et économiques

Property rights in Russia: The evolution of a legal category in response to political and economic turbulence The system and function of property rights have been transformed in the switch from pre-Revolutionary to contemporary law. A historical view of this institution reveals how the law has served various purposes over time: for the marketplace or for economic planning and the distribution of goods. Remnants of the Communist past have gradually undergone an original sort of "sedimentation" in contemporary law, which is now trying to assimilate the legacy of European law. To understand this process, the category of property is analyzed as well as the reform of civil law and the definition of its scope. Changes in property rights are reviewed in the light of recent privatizations. Given the complexity of these trends, the difficulty of creating a real estate market makes thoroughgoing institutional reforms a necessity.

Decentralised and centralised energy: a property rights analysis

Interconnection between centralised and decentralised electrical power sources remains a contentious issue on technical, economic, and policy grounds. This paper considers the problem of interconnection as a property rights problem one that involves allocation conflicts and pressures for institutional change. We argue that the current policy approach to interconnection problems between distributed-generation power sources and the distribution grid in California should take more careful account of changing property rights characteristics of the distribution grid. We review two emerging property rights frameworks community choice aggregation and public power cooperatives/municipalities, which may help overcome such interconnection barriers.

Land and Population Controls in Rural China

In the study of China’s rural development, anthropologists and other social scientists have tended to focus on changes in property rights, or changes in family planning and birth control policies. The literature has tended to treat each separately, as if they were unrelated. Economists and political scientists look at land policy, while demographers, sociologists and anthropologists look at family planning. Yet the two domains are, in real life, closely related as households attempt to match and manage their land and labor resources. Land and population policy and practice should thus be analyzed together. In this paper I bring together questions about land and family planning in relation to both policy and practice. I also examine the significance of lineage revival. I draw on my own fieldwork in rural north China and comparative material to examine local and regional variations and their significance.

Organic Agriculture in China: do property rights matter?

Since the early 1990s, the Chinese government has been promoting organic agriculture as an alternative to the ‘conventional’ agriculture practised in the Chinese countryside. The latter uses increasingly large amounts of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and, as a result, threatens the environmental sustainability of the rural economy. Though absolute numbers of organic farmers remain small, there has been a dramatic increase in their rate of growth since 1995, aided and abetted by the work of the Chinese Organic Food Development Centre (OFDC) in Nanjing established in that year. In 2002, the OFDC gained full international accreditation and recognition, allowing Chinese organic products certified by it to be sold in lucrative markets throughout the world. At the same time, there is a vigorous debate going on inside China regarding changes in property rights over land, with many scholars advocating full privatisation. This paper, through case study research, contributes to this debate in the context of the extension of organic farming in China. It examines current land rights arrangements in nine organic villages in different parts of the Chinese countryside to investigate whether they are conducive to organic agriculture expansion or hostile to it. On the basis of this research, it argues that the extant ‘partially privatised common property regime’ associated with the Household Responsibility System, when combined with appropriate collective arrangements amongst farmers, can be a satisfactory basis for the adoption of organic agriculture, particularly amongst China's poorest farmers. As a result, it concludes that the Chinese government should encourage those collective arrangements rather than risk new forms of instability as well as environmental unsustainability through wholesale land privatisation.

On Some Auction Rules for Amicable Divorce in Equal Share Partnerships

Partnerships form and dissolve. Dissolution often requires a change in property rights, from joint to single ownership, in the hands of one of the partners. This calls for a dissolution rule that assigns full property rights to the partner who makes the best use of these assets, and assures fair compensation of those who give up their ownership rights. The present paper analyzes two simple auction rules to solve these problems.

Herders response to acute land pressure under changing property rights: some insights from Kajiado District, Kenya

This paper examines the response of herders to increased shortage and degradation of land in an arid and semi-arid land setting in Kenya, under changing property right regimes using both survey and secondary data. We argue that the responses adopted are livelihood strategies to improve herder's welfare. We explore the determinants of three different strategies: crop cultivation, investment in land improvements, and migration with livestock. We employ the probit regression framework to explain each strategy. The main findings of the study are that private property rights, educational attainment, and availability of water are major determinants of the three strategies. We recommend policies that favour privatization of existing common property resources, improve education levels, and increase supply of water in the district.

Conditions, Commitments, and the Politics of Restructuring in Africa

Both supporters and critics of neoliberal reforms adopted by African countries during the past two decades argue that donor conditionalities have been counterproductive and should be abandoned. Several studies claim that, when donors have forced governments into implementing policies to which they were not committed, they either failed or were reversed and aid money was wasted. Furthermore, because investors perceived that African governments were coerced into enacting reforms rather than implementing them on their accord, they did not find the reforms credible. Fear that governments would reverse reforms in the short term deterred them from investing in many African countries.1 As an alternative to conditionality, some scholars and representatives of international financial institutions now contend that neoliberal reforms are more likely to succeed when national governments own them, that is, when they are committed to implementing them.2 In the case of austerity measures typically recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the logic of the argument is straightforward. If governments balance their budgets, stabilize their exchange rates, and improve their balance of payments, then growth (success) will occur.3 With regard to more structural reforms (such as changes in property rights), the reasoning is more complex. If government officials implement policies on their accord, in the absence of conditionality, they will be more committed to them. If they are more committed to them, the reforms will be successful. Part of the reasoning here rests on the notion of credibility. For example, if investors believe the government is committed to the sale of state assets to the private sector, then they will be more likely to invest. If investment increases, the policy reform is a success.4 The shift of emphasis from conditionality to and the linking of government ownership to a successful outcome pose several conceptual dilemmas for neoliberalism. The dilemma begins with the notion of commitment or ownership. The emerging perspective treats as if it is an action that a government can or should adopt unilaterally without acknowledging the risks such an action entails. How or what makes commitments credible is not specified, nor is there recognition of the role that social forces might play in molding, thwarting, or accelerating a government's decision to neoliberal policies.

Recrafting Rights over Common Property Resources in Mexico

I. Endogenous Evolution of Land Rights The propositions of Ester Boserup and the Property Rights School have dominated thinking about the endogenous evolution of land rights from open access to individual property. According to these views, there are two fundamental changes that push toward the privatization of a resource. One is its rising scarcity associated with population growth. The other is the rising value of the resource associated with greater market integration and the commercialization of agriculture. As long as there was land abundance and the resource had little commercial value, the marginal cost to current users of entry by an additional user was sufficiently small not to be worth opposing, and the magnitude of the externalities imposed in extraction by each user on all others was insignificant, making it not worth controlling. As the scarcity and value of the resource increases, changing property rights to regulate entry and to internalize the externality imposed by other users becomes profitable. Regulating entry requires transformation of the resource from open access to common property or to private property, limiting in each case access of the resource to a well-defined group of users. Internalizing externalities requires choosing between two options. One is to cooperate in the management of the common property resource (CPR) by introducing and enforcing rules that deter opportunism in the provision of services to the CPR and in the appropriation of resources from the CPR. The other is to divide the CPR among members of the community, either in subcoalitions where cooperation may prevail more easily or in individual allotments. The default option prevails when there is failure to enclose, failure to cooperate in the management of the CPR, and failure to enforce individual

Lessons from the Rise and (Possible) Fall of Chinese Township-Village Enterprises

The success of Chinese township-village enterprises (TVEs) poses a puzzle for a property rights approach to the theory of the firm, since no one really holds well-defined, transferable property rights to control and claim the residual profits of TVEs. TVEs also pose a second puzzle: in the last five or seven years, they have started to experience serious problems, despite reforms which have improved TVEs from a property rights perspective. This paper takes ideas from property rights and institutional approaches to economics and examines whether those ideas can help explain both of these puzzles. As to the first puzzle, reforms in the seventies and eighties created product market competition and gave local governmental officials and TVE managers enough of a stake in the success of the enterprises to encourage investment in them. TVEs were less imperfect than their leading alternatives, state-owned enterprises and private enterprises, the latter of which faced much discrimination. As to the second puzzle, although property rights reforms have improved TVE performance, reforms reducing the discrimination against private enterprises have made them more attractive. The paper also draws four general lessons from the TVE experience about the relationship between property rights and economic development. First, defining property rights properly is important to development, but other institutions (e.g. norms, financial institutions, capital markets, labor markets, political structure) are also quite important. Second, would-be reformers need to carefully consider the political constraints facing proposed changes in property rights. Third, property rights reforms are at least as much the effect of economic development as they are its cause. Fourth, the development path followed may affect the end states which can be feasibly reached.

Managing competences in entrepreneurial technology firms: a comparative institutional analysis of Germany, Sweden and the UK

Innovating firms in new industries face a number of technological and market risks, especially appropriability and competence destruction. However, the relative significance of these varies between different sub-sectors, and so do managerial ways of dealing with them. These in turn are influenced by institutional frameworks, particularly those governing skill formation systems and labour markets. Consequently, the relative success of firms in fields with different appropriability and competence destruction risks is likely to vary between countries with contrasting patterns of labour market organisation. In the biotechnology and computer software industries, there are major differences in the dominant risks faced by innovating firms such that we would expect their relative success to differ between Germany, Sweden and the UK. While the UK and, to a limited extent, Sweden, have developed institutions similar to those found in the US that help govern “radically innovative” firm competences, Germany has invested in institutional frameworks associated with “competency enhancing” human resource practices that give its firms an advantage in more generic technologies in which organisational complexity is higher. While the distribution of public companies across sub-sectors broadly follows these expectations, Sweden has developed considerable strength in middleware software. This results from changing property rights and personnel policies at Ericsson.

Sudden changes in property rights: the case of Australian native title

Recent High Court decisions in Australia relating to Aboriginal native title have the potential to provide insights to the origins of property rights and the possible costs of changes to those rights. This paper investigates these issues by analyzing the court judgements and by means of a stock market event study. It seems that neither the naı̈ve view nor the legal centralist view of property rights can adequately explain Australian native title. Further we do not find significant costs resulting from the change in property rights.

WAR FINANCE AND ABSOLUTIST STATE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE: AN EXAMINATION OF FRENCH VENALITY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

AbstractThe impact of warfare on absolutist state development in early modern Europe was more complicated than often thought by historians and theorists of the state. The competitive pressures of warfare did not always lead to linear political developments which would culminate in a centralized bureaucratic state. Instead, rulers' financial strategies along with the political effects of these strategies were conditioned by both structural and historical constraints. Political change in France over the course of the seventeenth century illustrates the impact of these two sets of constraints. Here, I trace in particular the changing property rights of office holding as a measure of political change shaped by war finance within these two sets of constraints.

II. Caspian Energy: Oil and Gas Resources and the Global Market

AbstractThis article develops several concepts of critical geopolitics and relates them to the energy resources of the Caspian Region. Energy resources beyond borders may be accessed by trade, respectively by conquest, domination and changing property rights. These are the survival strategies of human groups in the international system. The article differentiates between demand-induced scarcity, supply-induced scarcity, structural scarcity and the creation, respectively, transfer of property rights. Together, the behaviors referred to by these concepts create a field of social forces that cross state borders involving state and a variety of non-state actors. During World War II, the US began to separate the military borders of the country from its legal-territorial borders. By dominating the world's oceans, the Anglo-Saxon power presided over the capacity to induce scarcity by interdicting maritime supplies to allies and enemies alike. Today, overland transport increasingly connects economies and energy supplies on the Eurasian continent. The US has therefore to go on land in order to pre-empt the land-based powers from unifying their economies and energy supplies.

‘The bull is half the herd’: property rights and enclosures in England, 1750–1850

Common fields reduced the transaction costs for commoners’ cow keeping by lowering the cost of insemination. After enclosure, cow keeping fell among small owners who, unlike large farmers, could neither jointly own the bull and the cow nor lease the male easily. The minimum acreage required to restore cow keepers to their pre-enclosure economic position indicates that many commoners who were given some land at settlement were inadequately compensated for the change in property rights.

Goa: tourism, migrations, and ecosystem transformations.

This article is based on a larger case study that investigated the role of tourist induced and other population movements in causing coastal ecosystem change in Goa, India. It focuses especially upon agro-ecosystems locally known as khazan lands, and sand dunes, and how they are transformed to accommodate the needs of tourists and tourism. The effects of different forms of tourism upon land cover and land-use change is assessed. The research findings suggest that it is not population movements alone that cause ecosystem changes, but the changes in relations between people and ecosystems. This means that in some cases land cover has not changed as much as land use, and in other cases land cover has changed dramatically. Intermediary influences upon land use and land-cover change are also legal, political, and economic factors, particularly changes in property rights.

Property Rights and the Role of the State: Evidence from the Horn of Africa

This study applies extant theories of property rights change to three land tenure systems in Imperial Ethiopia. Two of the areas underwent changes in property rights after experiencing changes in the value of land; one did not. A data set of litigation over land rights is used in conjunction with case studies to understand the mechanisms motivating or impeding property rights change. Amendments to the role of the state are suggested and two conclusions are reached: (1) that movement towards greater specificity of land rights did not always occur; and (2) the changes in property rights that occurred were imposed from above, rather than occurring endogenously. Where property rights changes did not occur, they appear to have been blocked by the state, which was more concerned with political survival than with revenue maximisation.

Property rights and the role of the state: evidence from the Horn of Africa

This study applies extant theories of property rights change to three land tenure systems in Imperial Ethiopia. Two of the areas underwent changes in property rights after experiencing changes in the value of land; one did not. A data set of litigation over land rights is used in conjunction with case studies to understand the mechanisms motivating or impeding property rights change. Amendments to the role of the state are suggested and two conclusions are reached: (1) that movement towards greater specificity of land rights did not always occur; and (2) the changes in property rights that occurred were imposed from above, rather than occurring endogenously. Where property rights changes did not occur, they appear to have been blocked by the state, which was more concerned with political survival than with revenue maximisation.

From Village Land to “Native Reserve”: Changes in Property Rights in Sabah, Malaysia, 1950–1996

In this paper I explore the interactions between colonial law and native customary law in the formation of contemporary property regimes in a rural village in Sabah, Malaysia, that I call Govuton. Govuton was one of the few known villages in Sabah that rejected colonial policies of land settlement that focused on settling private, individual property claims. Instead, village leaders negotiated with colonial officials for their village lands to be legally designated as corporately-held village property under the title of “Native Reserve.” While the Native Reserve served to protect village access to jointly-held property in the colonial period, in the contemporary period new land disputes are arising as different images of community and tradition are strategically deployed by villagers in order to win struggles over rights of ownership and access to resources in the current political economy. By adopting such an historical and site-specific view of the transformation of property rights several broader themes regarding the relationship between state and society and natural resource management emerge. First, this case study challenges the idea the colonial governments were a monolithic force imposing laws on an unresisting native population. Second, the notion that “the community” is an appropriate unit for natural resource management is questioned. And finally, this case study raises the possibility that the current trend toward strengthening or reinvigorating native customary law is not always in the interests of native peoples with diverse interests in natural resource management.

Institutional Adaptation to Environmental Risk under the Transition in Vietnam

This paper develops a theoretical perspective on institutional adaptation to social vulnerability to environmental risks. Institutions encompass both socialized ways of interacting and underlying worldviews, as well as structures and organizations that influence resource allocation. The adaptation of institutions that mediate vulnerability to environmental change can be observed by examining actual resource allocations and the processes of decisionmaking and nondecisionmaking, as well as by examining changing perceptions of vulnerability. Institutional adaptation is evaluated in Nam Dinh Province in northern Vietnam, a country presently undergoing rapid economic and political transition. The case study highlights local-level institutional adaptation to environmental risks associated with flooding and typhoon impacts in the coastal environment. It is carried out through fieldwork involving qualitative household surveys and interviewing to elicit present and recent coping and adaptation strategies in the context of rapid changes in property rights and economic circumstances. Although Vietnam’s transition from state central planning is often heralded as a macroeconomic success story, this study argues that the transition has had negative impacts on social vulnerability. A decrease in collective action for risk management by state institutions is exacerbated by inertia in some aspects of the decentralized state planning system, while the parallel spontaneous reemergence of civil institutions forms a counterbalancing institutional adaptation.

Towards a sustainable Russian forest sector

Russia's forest resources are enormous, but despite almost ten years of transition, problems are still immense, in terms of commercial output and with respect to forest management. This article suggests that one way of changing the situation is to introduce community management of forests. Using the Swedish forest commons as an example, this article argues that such a change in property rights will provide an alternative to massive privatization of the forests and to the undesirable continuation or strengthening of state forest management. Finally, it is concluded that such an introduction of new property rights regimes will not provide the solution to the problems, but rather will contribute to the establishment of a better institutional framework in the Russian forest sector.